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On 29 November 2017, the University of Murcia signed an agreement with the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (hereinafter MINECO) for the project Semantic HÈRCULES for University Research Data. The purpose of this agreement is to establish collaboration between MINECO and the University of Murcia to contribute to the improvement of public services, through the promotion of business innovation, through the selection of actions and projects reflected in the second clause of the same for co-financing at 80% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the programming period 2014-2020.

Therefore, the University has launched the project HERCULES Semantic University Research Data with the aim of creating a Research Management System (RMS) based on open semantic data that offers a global view of the research data of the Spanish University System (SUS), to improve the management, analysis and possible synergies between universities and the general public.

Background 

CRUE (Confederación de Rectores de Universidades Españolas) is currently made up of 79 universities distributed throughout the country, each of which has its own management system. This means that each University has its own management procedures defined, with data models and schemes defined according to its criteria.

As a result of this situation, the combined exploitation of data by third parties presents the traditional problems of interoperability of heterogeneous information sources, not based on semantic and formal specifications of data and knowledge schemes. By way of example:

• Biased analysis of information needs.
• Absence of certain data of special interest.
• Application of incompatible data classifications.
• Representation of entities at different levels of granularity.
• Difficulty in discerning whether data from different sources have the same meaning.

In addition to teaching, universities actively participate in research programmes. The management of this participation is carried out by these own management systems which are disparate and not standardised, and which support, among others, the processes of:

• Preparation and follow-up of projects.
• Results management of R+D+i projects.
• Integrated economic and administrative management.
• Analytical accounting.

This general situation and, in particular, with regards to research management systems, causes great inefficiencies in the management of information and knowledge of the research system of Spanish universities. This entails additional costs derived from carrying out exploitation tasks with partial sets of data in each university, which it is then necessary to homogenise.

Sequential actions

Signing of the agreement with MINECO

- Video presentation of the Project

Publication of the Agreement in the BOE

- B.O.E.

Publication of the Addendum of the Agreement in the BOE

- B.O.E.

Preliminary market consultation (2017)

Early demand map (published April 2018)

 -See early demand map presentation event information here.